My Word for Yours
by princ3ssf33t
Summary: Its the Promised Day and Riza is forced to keep an old promise. AU. Written for Royai Week 2017. Theme: Promise.


Soldiers kept their voices quiet as they walked past the woman on her knees. The words they spoke to each other carried half-truths and slander, loud enough for her to hear, but quiet enough for others to mistake.

They needn't have worried. While she may have heard what words they said, she didn't _hear_ them.

Lost inside the turmoil of screaming voices in her head, she could only stare down at the torn and bloody gloves that covered her hands. They were hers, but not hers, would never be hers. But they were all she had left, all she had to hold onto.

" _If I ever stray from the correct path, shoot me with your own hands. You have that right."_

Her hands trembled violently, a faintly familiar tremor she had not seen resurface in years. Small dark spots appeared on the ground and on the white fabric of the gloves. An unbidden memory of the light teasing she had given him before _everything_ resurfaced and blinded her.

The sobs finally escaped her with gasping breaths and caused her whole body to quake.

Soldiers continued to walk past her without a second glance.

* * *

The power coursing through her veins was strange and intoxicating. It rushed through her veins, bringing with it a heady rush she had never felt before. The knowledge she kept hidden and buried in the back of her brain took over her brain. Formulas and equations she memorized lifetimes ago pushed through, as she snapped.

They weren't hers to hold. They were hers to own. They didn't represent anything good, only the evil and madness they brought. They were her only way to fight now.

A sudden bout of lightheadedness blurred her vision and she nearly stumbled into the rubble around her. Swallowing the small amount of blood that oozed from the open wound in her mouth, she reasserted herself upright and stared down the enemy.

The snap was still foreign to her.

* * *

She said no words when Edward and Scar found her, covered in blood and walking away from where the explosions had been coming from. Despite all the questions Edward threw at her, she only stared resolutely ahead and gripped the pristine white gloves with familiar red stitching tightly in her hands. Distraught, Ed continued his line of questioning until Scar laid a hand on the boy's shoulder. Silence fell over Ed and he stared at the lieutenant's back. She turned and her eyes gave him every answer to every question he had brewing inside.

" _I kept my promise."_

Confused, Ed turned to look down the tunnel where she had come from. Through the darkness he thought he could see a dark shape rested against the wall. He took a step before Scar's hand tightened on his shoulder to almost painful levels and he ceased his movements.

One look into the blood-red eyes of his newfound ally affirmed the uneasy thought that pushed forward from conversations long past, and Ed no longer wanted to look at the dark shape further down the tunnel.

* * *

Her vision was filled with white. It blinded her, consumed her. Cast away any defenses and anything that was thought to be secure, and bared it out for anyone to know. It reminded her of what she had been once many years ago, before she soaked her hands to the bone.

She hated it.

An amused chuckle from behind her gave her reason to turn. A white form stood there, a smile covering nearly half of their face. It made no move towards her, had no discernible weapons at its disposal, but she could feel its intent. Despite her resolve to never turn back, her foot involuntarily took a step back.

A pair of large doors stood tall over the being. Slowly, and without a creak, they opened to reveal the pitch blackness inside. It wasn't but a moment before the emptiness was filled with an eye that stared right through her. She stood frozen as tendrils of shadow reached out and dragged her through the gate.

* * *

The gold-toothed doctor assumed too much.

Alchemy was not a part of her blood as it had been her father, or Edward, or the man she had lost. She held no burning desire deep within her to discover the truth at the risk of losing who she was. She had never had the luxury of knowing who she was to even risk losing. They had never offered her the opportunity.

Still, she found herself pinned in the circle by the shadow that had haunted her movements and dreams for months on end. Darkness wrapped around her wrists and ankles, tighten around her neck; there was no escape.

Lightening came to life around her, and there was no stopping the screams from escaping her throat as the worried faces of her comrades staring down at her disappeared in a blinding light.

* * *

She leaned him against the wall and fought the tears in her eyes.

" _I swear I won't rest until I've found a way to erase the secrets that lead good men to madness."_ The sound of footsteps tore her attention away for a moment, before she took his gloves and pressed their only kiss to his bare palm.

" _Then I'll follow you into hell."_

* * *

Blood flowed out from her mouth no matter how she attempted to keep it within. It oozed thickly from between her fingers as she pressed them tightly against the lower half of her face. She could feel the presences around her. Edward and Alphonse, the dark-haired woman that taught them alchemy, their father, and the source of all the evil. She could feel multiple eyes pressing down on her as she bled over the floor of his _home_. He was speaking, but she heard no words. What did it matter?

"— _nd finally, the woman who valued her word no longer has any tongue in which to speak. Truly the Truth is a cruel master."_

She heard Edward respond with his burning, righteous, anger. She wished to tell him to stop, to save his breath for the fight that still awaited them, but she had no organ to tell him so. Finally she was as mute as the public assumed she was.

* * *

" _Please Colonel. Don't go where I can't follow."_

" _Then I'm sorry, Lieutenant. But it must be done."_

The gunshot was indecipherable from the explosion that consumed the worm that first pulled the trigger.

* * *

Sword lilies rested in between the two headstones. Each was plain, bearing a name, birthdate and death date. And as the years passed, as the survivors lived on, as they created their own families, as they pursued new dreams, the stones stayed as they were. Unchanging. A constant stream of fresh flowers and life updates whispered upon the hallowed ground hovered about it.

She always kept her word.


End file.
